God Is a Bullet

Despite its fine (tho under-rated) two leads, and its noted writer/director Nick Cassavetes, crime thriller "God Is A Bullet" is a sluggish disappointment. When cop Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's ex-wife (and her husband) are killed & teen daughter kidnapped by Karl Glusman's evil demonic cult (including Ethan Suplee), ex-cult member Maika Monroe (strong again) helps him track them to Mexico to get the daughter back (helped by Jamie Foxx). Tho an apparently true tale it seems far fetched, simplistic, hole-filled, and a tad repetitive & slow. While nowhere near matching the best of those involved (like Coster-Waldau's similarly toned "Shot Caller") it's still just about watchable.

At the beginning of the story, a cult snatches a girl who is the daughter of a policeman. Another girl who used to work for the cult teams up with the policeman to help him find his daughter. The story is well-written. It is hard to predict the next scenes. The acting crew is well-selected. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Maika Monroe, Jamie Foxx, and Karl Glusman are awesome in this movie. The movie is full of nice action scenes. I liked the angles of the camera and its movement during the scenes especially in the car chasing scenes. There are many different locations in the movie. In general, I recommend this movie to horror and action movie fans.

On what you want.

I'll tell you right off, it's not shakespeare. It's not christopher nolan...OR barbie. It's not spielberg. There's a decent amount of gore and bloodshed. So if that's what you are in it for, you shouldn't be too disappointed.

I don't understand all the reviews that trashed the guy from Game of Thrones. As if THEY should be deciding which roles he should or shouldn't be taking? He was decent in this role. Probably why the movie works at ALL. Although the bad guy was believable, too. I'm thinking the movie was too long. There ARE parts that could've been edited without hurting the story at ALL. But...it is what it is. A violent movie about a lot of ugly sort of people. Including the people on the periphery.

So. It wasn't terrible. I can't see how people wouldn't know what they're going into, watching this film. Maybe they can only justify seeing it by trashing it in a review... there were a few loose ends, i thought, that could've used tying up. But, since it was 'based on a true story', maybe that was the part that was true. Things don't always wind up the way we'd like them to in some movies...

Based on the rating and tons of negative reviews, I expected this to be a major dissapointment. However I decided to give it chance because of Nicolaj Coster - Waldau, who has surprised me with some excellent roles before (Shot Caller). I understand people's frustration as they have seen the version that is 2 and a half hours long, but there is a one of an hour and 47 minutes which is excellent. If you are a fan of 80's and 90's action/revenge /old Mad Max movies vibe, give this one a chance (at least the shorter version) and you might find yourself entertained and pleased. At least I have....

What I saw was a great story ruined by amateur-hour filmmaking. Shockingly, Nick Cassavetes - the same guy who directed The Notebook, directed this mess. You're supposed to get better the more films you make, not worse. A fifth grade drama class could've come up with a better production.

This was so poorly and lazily directed and written, it was riddled with plot and technical issues. It was tedious and exhausting without enough emotional depth, nuance or palpable suspense. It's a grimy, violent exploitation movie dressed up pretending it has something to say, yet fails to yield any visceral emotional impact. Even some of the dialogue was absolute nonsense, moronic and cringe, worthy of eyerolls.

There were so many filmmaking errors, they started off as hilarious, then became annoying. At about the midway part of the (two hour) film, the scenes where Case and Bob are in the pick-up, Case's nose cut and black eyes vanished for a couple of camera angles, then magically re-appeared. Then we're supposed to believe that Nikolaj's character got all these tattoos in one sitting, and they all healed with no redness or scars. It doesn't get any more lazy and amateur-hour filmmaking than that. Even the action scenes at the end where laughable and defied logic and reasoning. The filmmaking also lacked urgency, was bloated, boring for the most part, and poorly paced. I pity those that had to sit trough the longer version of this nonsense.

Aside from the outstanding performances, and decent cinematography and score, this was a huge misfire plagued by amateur-hour and lazy filmmaking. God Is a Bullet may be loaded, but it's only firing blanks. Too bad a better filmmaker wasn't hired to make this film, it had tons of promise with its based-on-true-events story.